1.The intro had proper talking in it.

...none of that pretentious "huge CGI cities being winched into place" nonsense you get in Game of Thrones. Xena's intro told you what the show was about and - more importantly- that it had both passion and danger in it. Game of Thrones tells you nothing: it's like fancy advert for a cog and map shop.

Game of Thrones is rooted in one time period: a sort of gritty medieval version of 80s kids' TV show Knightmare (but with more incest and fewer geeky 11 year olds). Xena, on the other hand, isn't restricted at all. One week she's fighting in the Trojan War, the next she's being crucified by Julius Caesar. Does she have a time machine? No. The writers didn't have Wikipedia in the '90s so they couldn't check their facts.

Women really don't get to do much in Game of Thrones. Apart from secretly rule kingdoms behind their son's back, command an army of fearsome Dothraki warriors or disguise themselves as a boy and....ok, fine. They get to do quite a lot, but at no point do any of them put on saucy leather armour and kneel on each other, so it doesn't count.

No one can stand Joffrey. If you can bear watching his scrunched up little face on your screen for more than 2 seconds, I'll give you a medal. He's like a kid I saw on Supernanny USA who wouldn't stop biting his grandma. In the face.

8....but it DID have plenty of confusing, barely explained sexual yearning.

Seriously, I don't mind a bit of subtext but Xena aired in 1996, not 1956. Couldn't they have let them be super gay at each other, at least once? A bit like when they show (terrible UK teen soap) Hollyoaks late at night and let the characters go crazy and hump a lot to justify airing it after 10pm.

1.) Brienne can't do a backflip. 2) She's always looking off into the middle distance like she can't quite make out the number of an oncoming bus and 3) She wears a scarf on top of her armour. Did she let her mum dress her?